Skyrim Dawnguard Trailer Unveiled: Get Your Van Helsing On

Who or what are the Dawnguard, you ask? Bethesda’s finally answered, earlier than expected, in a surprise 1:37 long trailer for the eponymous forthcoming Skyrim expansion pack. Think vampire hunters in heavy plate, like a medieval version of Sergey Lukyanenko’s Day Watch.

It looks like you’ll be doing some work for a vampire lord, whose initial voice-over teases a morality play: “You have found our fortress. You have returned my daughter. But what is it you seek? Is it to be one of us? To make the darkness your own? To feast on the souls of the living?” In other words: Will you scratch your sanguinary itch with the vampires and stand against the Dawnguard? Or make like Dudley Do-Right and skewer the vamps?

You’ll be able to purchase and download Dawnguard this summer, exclusive to the Xbox 360 for 30 days, for 1600 MS Points, or $20. Bethesda calls it a “game add-on” in the trailer, as opposed to “downloadable content.” I imagine it’ll be substantial, considering Skyrim creative lead Todd Howard said in February that the company wanted to take more time with the game’s followup content (than it did with Fallout 3‘s) and that the add-ons would “feel closer to an expansion pack.”